October 6th: The Millennium

Speaker: Chris Laws

What do we know from the Bible about the thousand-year reign of Christ? Is it literal?

Last time, survey of New Testament except Revelation.
One great event – Day of the Lord/Christ/Last Day = Second Coming (visible), with all His angels, resurrection of dead, separation of the just and unjust, Last Judgement of just and unjust, end of the world and universe, death of death, new bodies, new heavens and earth, eternal kingdom.

Today millennium – when believers speak of last things, it all revolves round their position on millennium.
Curious thing. Some churches even insist on belief in it for membership.
Imagine you are ignorant of Christianity, shipwrecked on a desert island, and find a Bible but Rev 20.2-7 is illegible.   
      Read Bible through – you would never have read of a millennium.
      Just 6 verses, yet innumerable theories and books have been constructed on them.
People drawn strongly to the end-time things, but to the millennium in particular.
By contrast BCF doesn't even mention it.
Is there going to be a 1000 year reign of Christ, and if so when?

REVELATION 20
20.1-2    Symbolic – key, chain, bottomless pit, dragon (elsewhere the beast with 7 heads and 10 crowns, etc).
Why not the 1000 years? A curiously round number. Numbers in Revelation are not literal.

20.3        Satan bound “that he should deceive the nations no more”.
OT times, “times of ignorance” (Acts 17.30), gross darkness, paganism, child sacrifice, demon possession.
Then the Gospel spread its light throughout the world; Satan was powerless to stop it.
The church had gone international. Roman pagan festivals ceased.
Matt 12.28 “But if I cast out devils…then the kingdom of God is come.”
Casting out of demons – frequent in Christ's ministry, but not since.
Luke 10.17-18 “And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”         
John 12.31 “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up...will draw all men unto me.”
Note “cast” is the same word as Rev 20.3 “cast him into the bottomless pit”.
Still tempts, and tries to destroy us, but he can “deceive the nations no more”. Like a chained dragon.
A new world era has commenced. The Gospel age.

Col 2.15 “Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them.” 

20.4  Souls of the saved, many martyrs “lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years”.
We become disembodied souls at death, before the Last Day when the resurrection will occur.
Disembodied souls are in heaven, not on earth. Christ is reigning with disembodied souls in heaven.
Hence the millennial reign is in heaven, not on earth.

20.5-15 What happens at the end of the 1000 years?
Satan released, gathers army, destroyed. Then the Last Judgement: (20.12) “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened…and the dead were judged.”
When is this 1000 year reign?
Starts when Satan is bound – in Christ's earthly ministry.
Ends at Last Judgement or His Second Coming.
The Gospel age. Christ reigns in Heaven with souls of past believers awaiting the Last Day and resurrection.
Glorious time of Gospel light, with Satan limited in what he can do.

VIEWS TODAY
Many Christians believe in a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on earth.

Post-millennial – Second Coming is after the millennium (rare). Christianity will grow and prevail on earth – the millennium. Worldwide revival, evil restrained, Satan bound. Then Second Coming.
Nowhere else do we read of a converted world before He comes. The opposite.
“Evil men…shall wax worse and worse” (2 Tim 3.13). Wheat and tares grow together until harvest.

Pre-millennial – Second Coming is before the millennium (very common).
Historic form: Second Coming, resurrection of believers, 1000 yr reign, Jerusalem rebuilt, resurrection of wicked, Last       Judgement, new creation.
What happened to the “Last Day”? 1000 yrs inserted between Second Coming and Last Judgement.
2 Tim 4.1 “Who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.”
(Not all premillennials think it will be a 1000 years literally.)

Modern complex form, since mid 19th C, popularised with dispensationalism by Scofield Bible:
Secret coming + rapture/ 7yr tribulation, Antichrist rules/ 2nd ‘Second Coming’, Armageddon, Christ reigns at
Jerusalem 1000 yrs/ Satan loosed, resurrection of wicked, Last Judgement. 
Various schemes – 2/3/4 resurrections, up to 5 judgements.
What happened to the “Last Day”?

A-millennial – there won't be a literal millennium. Usual reformed position.

HISTORY OF MILLENNIUM
Absent from Gospels, Acts, all epistles.
Absent from writings of Apostolic fathers – just speak of the Last Day.
Early 2ndC – absent except for Justin Martyr (inconsistent) and Papias (very fanciful).
Irenaeus taught a millennium (died AD202).
3rdC – decided opposition to earthly millennium. Origen against it.
4thC – Augustine laid it to rest. Middle ages – millenarianism scarcely existed at all.
AD1000 – flurry of concern: end of the world? People thought a literal millennium started at Christ’s first coming.
People threw away treasure, abandoned estates.
AD1500 – Reformation. Appeared in a sect of the Anabaptists. Reformers opposed.
Calvin: “Their fiction is too puerile to require or deserve refutation”. Puritan view.
Condemned by Reformed confessions: Augsburg Confession, Edward VI English Confession (39 articles), Belgic
Confession (Holland, Belgium, Germany), 2nd Helvetic Confession (France, Switzerland, Scotland).
Systematic theologies: Berkhof and Reymond

The historic Protestant position is not millennarian.
A-millennialism is the only view expressed/implied in the great historic confessions.
Pre-millennialism is a theory/scheme constructed on 6 verses which is at variance with historic belief.

REVELATION
(1) Not just about end times. Rev 1.1 “things which shall shortly come to pass”. Not just for end-time believers.
Help for persecuted 1stC believers.
(2) Not just about Early Church times. Much about the Last Judgement.
(3) Theme is victory of Christ and Church over Satan.
Not a history, but explanation of history. Christ rules (providence). Things aren't what they seem.
After the letters to the seven churches, the book starts: Rev 4.1: “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.”
Come up into the ‘control tower’.

Seven sections
Describe the Gospel age, explain events.
1 – 3   Seven lampstands – seven churches. Throughout entire Gospel age, Christ moves among us.
4 – 7   Seven seals – the plan of God carried out by the Lamb. Ends with Last Judgement.
8 – 11 Seven trumpets – warnings to men. Ends with Last Judgement.
12 – 14   Churches persecuted by Satan, governments, false religions. Ends with Last Judgement.
15 – 16   Seven bowls – judgements. Ends with Last Judgement.
17 – 19   Babylon – anti-Christian seduction, pleasure-mad world – and its fall. Ends with Last Judgement.
20 – 22  Gospel day and Satan's little season and doom. Last Judgement end of Rev 20, then eternal kingdom.
Same period covered repeatedly: Christ's first coming to Last Judgement.
Confirmation that it is the Gospel age.

APPLICATION
1.     Be careful how you handle Scripture. Simple, plain teaching first, then the more figurative.
2.     Work while it is day. Aren't the shadows falling? Isn’t the Gospel day drawing to a close?
3.     All history is the outworking of God's plan – all else is to be destroyed. Live for him, not career.